Spanish Tortilla

After I made this dish, I thought to myself, why don’t I cook this more often? It’s so delicious and so easy! It’s even good at room temperature, making it a perfect anytime food. Moreover, it’s vegetarian so it’s a sure crowd-pleaser. You can make it non-vegetarian too, by the way. But anyway, I made a big batch of this Spanish tortilla and had them for four hearty meals. Truthfully it’s probably closer to six servings.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. waxy potatoes like Yukon gold or red potatoes
Plenty of salt (roughly 2-3 tsp) and black pepper
Plenty of oil for frying (0.25 cup give or take)
10 eggs
1 large red onion (you can use yellow onion but red onion makes it a little more colorful)
1 small bunch of flat-leaf parsley (I like the brightness both in appearance and in flavor but you can also skip it if you don’t have it)

Directions

Scrub your potatoes clean and take out any “eyes” if you see any. I don’t peel my potatoes as I don’t see the need and I think the skin will add some roughage in my diet but feel free to do that if you prefer. Slice the potatoes into about 0.25-inch thick. You can toss out the ends if you like. I find that slicing the ends get a little tricky and I don’t want you to cut yourself. Submerge the potato slices in cold water to wash out some of the starch.
Heat up a cast iron skillet with a couple tablespoons of oil and fry the potatoes in batches. Don’t overcrowd your skillet as that will cook the potatoes unevenly. Add a little more oil into the pan for each batch if you need it. Fry the potato slices for about a minute or two on each side. You do not need to cook them thoroughly, just about halfway. After you take them out, generously salt them when they are still hot. You can drain them carefully on a rack but I just used a big mixing bowl here. There’s no wrong way, really.
While the potatoes are frying, use some of the waiting time between each batch to slice up the onion. I was going for rings too but the onion I had was pretty big so I ended up cutting each ring in half. If you have smaller onion, I think it’ll look pretty as rings. Also, chop the parsley. It doesn’t need to be finely chopped but don’t make them too coarse either.
(Sorry about the yellow cutting board – I used it to chop up some kimchi and I can’t seem to get rid of the yellow…)
Get another large mixing bowl (here we go again with the excessive bowl usage) and crack all the eggs into the bowl. Salt and pepper generously and mix in the fried potatoes, sliced onions, and parsley. Make sure you mix them well so you don’t end up with random pockets of tons of parsley in your tortilla.
If your cast iron skillet has cooled down, heat it back up with a few more tablespoons of oil. Pour in your egg mixture and let the tortilla cook uncovered. After about 8-10 minutes, you should see the eggs starting to cook. In my picture below, you can see that I have quite a bit of oil pooling here. I made the mistake of pouring in too much oil at the beginning but it really didn’t hurt anyone. When you see the eggs starting to solidify, put a lid on your skillet and lower the heat to medium-low. You can also pop it in a 400°F oven if you happen to remember to pre-heat your oven ahead of time (which I didn’t…). Continue cooking for another 8-10 minutes or until the eggs are cooked through and the potatoes are soft.
Totally optional: brown the top under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp up the top layer of potatoes. Slice into six (or eight) equal parts and serve with a side salad.